New EU Packaging Rules Could Cost Czech Online Shops Hundreds of Thousands of Crowns

Since January 2025, a new EU packaging regulation known as the PPWR has been in force — and it has created an unexpected headache for online retailers who sell across the bloc. According to Czech entrepreneurs, if a shop merely allows the possibility of an order from a customer in another EU country — say, Estonia — it must register there and pay for packaging collection and recycling, even if it has never actually sold anything to that country.

"If you allow for the possibility that someone from Estonia might buy from you, you have to pay for that in advance — regardless of whether you ever sell anything there at all," Czech entrepreneur Tomáš Houška explained on Facebook.

A Quarter of a Million Crowns a Year in Extra Costs

On top of registration, shops are now required to appoint a local representative in every target country to ensure compliance. For small businesses, this means fixed costs regardless of how much product is actually shipped to a given country — the rule generally makes no exception for small retailers or those sending only the occasional parcel.

According to Houška's calculations, the cheapest combination of registrations and representatives needed to sell across the entire EU would cost around €8,000, or roughly 200,000 crowns a year. A more realistic estimate is €10,000, or around 240,000 crowns — and that figure doesn't even include the fees for packaging actually shipped.

Retailers across the EU are facing the same problem. German online shop Farbenfux used to ship to 26 countries, but as of August 12 it has scaled back to just seven destinations. The company says it was only sending a handful of parcels a year to Finland, Sweden, Ireland or Estonia — and maintaining a local representative there would have cost more than the profit from those sales.

Even the European Commission Proposed Scrapping the Rule

"The European Commission has put entrepreneurs across Europe in a situation where it has imposed a mountain of bureaucratic obligations, yet failed to produce clear and sensible rules of its own," said Tomáš Prouza, president of the Czech Confederation of Commerce and Tourism. Paradoxically, the European Commission itself acknowledged the mandatory appointment of local representatives as a problem even before the regulation took effect. In December 2025, it proposed suspending the requirement until 2035, arguing that it undermines the competitiveness of European companies and creates unnecessary costs and red tape, especially for small and medium-sized businesses.

However, most EU member states, including Czechia, opposed the suspension. It's not that they don't recognize the burden on business — rather, governments fear that scrapping the rule would make it harder to monitor foreign sellers and let some of them dodge packaging fees altogether.

For now, the European Commission has recommended that national authorities simply warn shops without a representative rather than impose sanctions. That said, the obligation itself remains in place — enforcement is left up to individual countries. The issue is expected to return to the table in the autumn, likely in October, as part of discussions on the so-called circular economy.

Source: novinky.cz